The Troubles

The Troubles was a thirty-year era of violence in Northern Ireland between Catholic Irish republicans - advocates of a united Ireland - and Protestant Ulster Scots unionists, those who favored remaining in the United Kingdom, which lasted from around 1968 to 1998. The conflict was essentially a continuation of the conflict between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the United Kingdom that had started with the Easter Rising of 1916, and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) was formed in 1969 with the goal of using force to reunite Ireland, continuing the IRA's republican insurgency. After the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of 30 January 1972, the insugency intensified, and the IRA perpetrated several terrorist attacks against unionists and British Army soldiers sent to quell the unrest in Northern Ireland. The unionist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) carried out revenge attacks against Catholics, leading to sectarian conflict. The Troubles would see clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, bombing campaigns on mainland Britain, and urban and rural guerrilla warfare against the British Army by the IRA until 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was agreed upon. The Northern Ireland Assembly formed a parliament at Stormont to rule Northern Ireland as the republican Sinn Fein party was allowed to share power with the unionist parties, although it would not be until 28 July 2005 that the IRA announced that it would cease its armed campaign.

Background
The establishment of modern Northern Ireland dates back to the English Civil War in the 1640s, during which the English Parliamentarian leader Oliver Cromwell invaded and conquered the whole of Ireland.